I’m looking at you, too, opera attendees. I love my opera and you all are far too stuffed-shirt to be let in to a show like Tosca.

She thinks your cuuuuuteeeee

You got a pic!!! With Bernard himself!!!

Likes*. Dear god.

Maybe Bertie like sports? Is…is that the feline distinction here?

I guarantee the world it’s a characteristic we share with cisgender women. Therefore: female socialization. It’s a phenomenon and not speaking about it does everyone ill.

But also this is the internet which is where nuance goes to die. So. Ymmv.

Aww. Please give him scritches from me and tell him he is a very good cat.

Named after the best dragon age character, I presume?

Good on you! 17 published short stories is amazing!

Ser Pouncealot 🥹

Yes yes yes 100%. I was also on tumblr in the 2010s XD It’s insidious the way that instinct to self censor gets in your head and creative process. Some writing friends of mine try to adhere to that — it’s so injurious to their writing. Keeps folks from taking creative risks. I hate it.

Totally. But Lady Chatterley was mainly the issue of the post controlling access to the material rather than dictating what the material could itself be (at least in the US — no idea how its release went in the UK). Hays Code was designed with upholding American moral standards in mind.

Yes! I’ve seen that, too. I don’t mind an involved backstory, but when it feels like overwrought justification… it just feels weird.

I beg of people to be as hesitant of preachy stories as they are of self-help books.

Anyway that’s my two bits

Listen. I grew up Catholic. I like a morality play as much as the next filthy peasant. But let’s be real here: if lessons are told over the course of a story, that’s all well and good. But dear god, these are works of fiction, not instruction manuals.

Meanwhile the massive media exportation USAmerica does is a modern moral colonialism (for lack of better terms).

You’re hitting on something that’s been bothering me with some current discourse trends I’ve seen over the last few years. There’s almost this… I don’t know if it’s a desire or a compulsion… but to have writers not so much edit their work as bowdlerize it. Does that make sense?

Is that…supposed to be a kinkajou?